„Czy to jest zamiast, w zastępstwie Zagłady?”. O postpamięci w sytuacji śmiertelnej choroby

Tony Judt (1948‑2010) descended from a Jewish family. He ran an active life. Judt was considered a unique erudite because he knew French, German and Czech fluently. He was a historian who specialized in the latest European history, an author of the brilliant synthesis Postwar. A History of Europe Since 1945 and many other books. He was also a Professor at New York University, and Director of NYU’s Erich Maria Remarque Institute, a political commentator and an essayist. In his prime he fell ill with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, which he described with medical precision in his autobiography The Memory Chalet. Being confronted with terminal illness it is hard to find right words to describe this difficult position. The seriously ill searches for adequate comparisons and conceptual models. Tony Judt, like Ulla‑Carin Lindquist and Agata Tuszyńska, finds them in the semantics of the Holocaust. Judt confessed that the Holocaust was always close to his life. In the book Thinking the Twentieth Century he called himself “heir of the Holocaust”. In the latest statements of Judt one can find discreet traces of postmemory.